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Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), who faces a tough reelection campaign in 2014, quickly followed suit in a statement that rivaled even many Republicans in denouncing the proposal.

“I am dead-set against the EPA and their scheme to issue emissions standards that would make it next to impossible for new coal-fired power plants to be constructed,” Rahall said. He added, “This callous, ideologically driven agency continues to be numb to the economic pain that their reckless regulations cause. Today’s rule is just the latest salvo in the EPA’s war on coal, a war I have unwaveringly soldiered against, and I will work tirelessly to prevent such an ill-conceived and illogical plan from moving forward.”

“Yet again President Obama’s administration has taken direct aim at Kentucky jobs,” Grimes said. “Kentuckians deserve better than out-of-touch Washington regulation that further devastates an already ravaged region.”

But Republicans are convinced that coal-state Democrats will have trouble distancing themselves from EPA.

“This is bad, bad news for House Democrats in 2014,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Daniel Scarpinato said in an email. “Democrat incumbents and challengers are going to be forced to explain this move by the Obama administration.”

Manchin said the proposed rule, which would impose strict pollution standards requiring future coal-burning plants to capture and store about 40 percent their carbon emissions, holds the coal industry to “impossible standards.” To meet the rule’s emissions limits, future coal plants would have to install expensive technology to capture and store their carbon dioxide. And that technology has not yet been adopted on a large scale.

“Never before has the federal government forced an industry to do something that is technologically impossible,” Manchin said.

Rahall has emerged as a top 2014 target for Republicans, who have tried to tie him to Obama’s climate agenda and attacked him in NRCC ads. One ad hit Rahall for attending a July ceremony renaming EPA’s headquarters after former President Bill Clinton — although Rahall later told POLITICO that he used the visit to speak bluntly to Administrator Gina McCarthy about the agency’s impact on his state.

His Republican opponent, Evan Jenkins, said Rahall shares the blame for EPA’s policies.

“Surely Rahall will feign outrage at EPA’s latest attack on West Virginia, but the facts speak for themselves: he helped President Obama get elected and he’s voted multiple times in support of EPA’s job-killing agenda,” Jenkins said in a statement.

McCarthy insisted Friday that the regulation will help the coal industry, not hurt it.

“Look, we know that coal is going to be part of the energy generation that we rely on substantially over the next few decades,” she said. “Why wouldn’t we now acknowledge and invest in the kind of technologies that will allow coal a future long beyond that?

One West Virginia Democrat, retiring Sen. Jay Rockefeller, embraced EPA’s regulation as “a daunting challenge” but also a “call to action.”

“West Virginia and America have overcome far greater technological obstacles than this one, and I refuse to believe we can’t do it again,” the retiring West Virginia Democrat said in a statement.

Rockefeller used the regulations to call for increased investment and advancement of technology to reduce emissions at coal plants. “These rules will only work if we act now to strengthen our investment in clean coal technology and to advance public-private partnerships more seriously than ever,” he said.